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Setting Up Content Center Approval Workflows

You can use Siebel Business Process Designer to manage workflows for the content item approval process. When the Start Project or Request Start Project action is invoked on a content project, the approval workflows associated with each content item in the project are instantiated.

Approval workflows allow you to specify the structure for contributing, reviewing, and approving content. The designated contributors and approvers are notified by new records in their Content Inbox at the appropriate step in the content production and approval process. For more information about designating contributors and approvers, see Setting Up Content Types.

A state model and some workflows are associated with the approval workflow included in the seed data that is provided in Siebel applications. You can use these processes in your deployment, modify them to meet the needs of your business, or use them as a guide for creating your own approval workflows.

For more information on creating or modifying workflows, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.

NOTE:  All Content Center workflows should be placed into the Content Center group.

About the Content Item State Model

A state model, called Content Item Status, controls the status changes of a content item.

Table 4 describes each of the content item states.

Table 4. Content Item Status
State
Description

Pending Submit

Applied by the workflow process.

If the current task in the workflow is a Contribute task, the workflow process applies the Pending Submit state to indicate that an end user is expected to perform some action on the content item.

Submitted

Applied by an end user.

A content contributor applies the Submitted state to indicate that the actions associated with this content item have been completed.

Pending Approval

Applied by the workflow process.

If the current task in the workflow is an Approval task, the workflow process applies the Pending Approval state to indicate that an end user is expected to review the content item.

Approved

Applied by an end user.

A content approver applies the Approved state to indicate that the content item has been reviewed and approved.

Rejected

Applied by an end user.

A content approver applies the Rejected state to indicate that the content item has been reviewed and disapproved.

Canceled

Applied by an end user.

A content contributor or approver applies the Canceled state to indicate that the content item should no longer be included in the current content project.

Completed

Applied by the workflow process.

This is a terminal state that indicates that the workflow approval process has been completed for the content item. A content item must be in the Completed state before it can be published.

About the Content Approval (Single Approver) Workflow

The Content Approval (Single Approver) workflow is a simple workflow that demonstrates a single approver approval process. You can use this workflow with or without modification.

The Content Approval (Single Approver) workflow uses these step types to construct the business logic for content item approval:

  • Content Task Subprocess. This step type is used to indicate that the Content task assigns the content item to an end user to perform some action. Each Content task has a type and a sequence number. The task type is either contribution or approval. The task sequence indicates the Siebel position to which the content item should be assigned, as specified on the content item. This step calls the Content task workflow subprocess. For more details about the subprocess, see About the Content Task Subprocess.
  • State Decision Point. This step type performs branching logic in the approval process. The branching logic is based on the state that is applied to the content item after a Content task. For example, a decision point is used to reassign a content item to the originator after it is rejected.
  • State Update Siebel Operations. This step type is used to make updates to the content item state.

You can use these workflow components to create new approval workflows or to modify the Content Approval (Single Approver) workflow for your business. For example, if you require two approval tasks, you can add two Content Task Subprocesses and State Decision Points.

About the Content Task Subprocess

The Content Task Subprocess contains the common logic of assigning a content item and waiting for a user action. The parent approval process calls this subprocess each time a content item is assigned to an end user. Calling this task causes the content item to appear in the Content Inboxes for those users associated with the current sequence (TaskSeq).

The parent business process must pass in the input arguments shown in Table 5.

Table 5. Parent Approval Process Input Arguments
Input Argument
Description

Object Id

The content item ID from the parent (Content Approval) to the child (Content Task) Subprocess.

TaskSeq

Passes the sequence number of the current task.

TaskType

Indicates that the current task is either type Contribute or type Approve.

The Content Task Subprocess performs these actions:

  • Sets the content item state to either Pending Submit or Pending Approve, depending on the TaskType for the current task.
  • Sets the content item Current Approval Sequence Number field to the TaskSeq value. This makes the content item visible to the appropriate end users in the Content Inbox view.
  • Waits for the end user to take action on the content item and make a state change to the item. When this occurs, the workflow process resumes and returns control to the parent approval process.

About the Auto Complete Workflow

An approval workflow must be run for each content item before a content project can be published. (See To start the project approval workflow.) To publish content without routing it through approvers and contributors, use the Auto Complete workflow. The Auto Complete workflow is a simple workflow, provided with the seed data. It sets the status of a content item to Completed immediately so that the project is ready for publication.

  
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